B (6:07)

Yeah, my name's Erin West. I was a prosecutor for 26 and a half years, and I recently retired to start my own nonprofit focusing on this scamdemic.

A (6:19)

And what, why? No, and fair question. You're chugging along with one career, and what causes you to totally toss that and start something else?

B (6:30)

Yeah, I wouldn't say toss it. I would say, enhance it. So what I was finding as a prosecutor was that we were being hit with a very targeted crime wave run by transnational organized criminals. And what we're seeing and what we continue to see on our phones every single day and in our email are attempts to steal our money. And from where I sat as a prosecutor, I was watching the greatest theft of American money that's ever been committed. What I was seeing was victims coming to me, telling me that they had their entire net worth stolen from them. And as I tried to work on these cases as a local prosecutor, I found that our country was not prepared, our national law enforcement, our local law enforcement was not prepared to respond to that crisis. I found that our banks were not ready to respond to that crisis. I found that everybody needed a lot of education on what was happening. And that was something that I really couldn't do from my spot as a low school prosecutor anymore.

A (7:43)

I'm fascinated by this. So you're working as a prosecutor and you become aware of these. Is this because you were trying to try cases or you'd hear of things? What was the information pipeline that was giving you that was causing you to say, wait a minute, I've got to do something?

B (7:58)

Yeah. As a prosecutor for 26 years, you do a lot of different roles within the office. And the role I was doing toward the end of my career at the DA's office was I was working with a high tech task force. And the task force is the go to in Santa Clara County, California, where I live, where cases are too big for local jurisdictions or local jurisdiction doesn't know what to do with this case. And so all of a sudden, Starting in early 2022, we were seeing victims come to us and say that I was involved in a romance scam slash cryptocurrency theft scheme. And the results were like nothing we'd ever seen before. The amount of loss, the amount of devastation toward victims was, when I say incredible. Incredible in that we had never seen anything like this.

A (8:59)

And did it start to feel like a wave? Was there a time to start to feel like it was accelerating?

B (9:05)

It did. It felt like all of a sudden, once we identified what this crime was, we saw it everywhere. And more and more victims kept coming our way. And I'm a super curious person. When I find something that is new to me or I don't understand, I study it. And so I started to do the background research on where this crime was coming from. And I quickly found out that it was happening at scale, out of industrial facilities in Southeast Asia. So it made sense that we were getting inundated with this crime.

A (9:43)

And I presume I'm just fascinated by this because it was like, this is new. We knew fraud existed. It's been there. But these waves of industrial fraud were starting to happen. When did it pull you towards the role you have now?

B (10:02)

Yeah. So when we first started seeing it, and you asked in the last question, I didn't answer it about the rise of it. Since March 2022, I have seen nothing but a massive increase in this fraud. I've seen a change in the way that it's perpetrated and that more and more people are getting hit. And so, from my local prosecutor standpoint, I worked with a team that very much focused on the idea of what if we could. That this was a new type of crime. It was being perpetrated in a new way. Well, let me be clear. It's an old crime. We're going to steal your money. But it was being perpetrated in a new way, and it was using technology that was unfamiliar to both the victim and law enforcement, and that worked to the benefit of the scammers. So my team developed a strategy for how to claw back some of that lost money and get it back in the hands of victims. News of that spread. We were really inundated with victims coming our way, and we had way more business than we could handle. As this increased, we realized we needed to spread the word and we needed to be part of the solution of educating law enforcement how to use the blockchain as an investigative tool and help victims recover their assets. For over two years, we did exactly that and at the same time, kept raising the volume on awareness. And we're still not at a place where everybody knows what this crime is, but it is something that I talk about seven days a week and rely on others to spread the word as well.

A (11:53)

So you're not a technical person.

B (11:55)

Nope.

A (11:56)

You've now tossed into this world where you're starting to talk about blockchains and fraud and all of this stuff. What was that like?

B (12:03)

Well, I love that, actually, because it just shows that the blockchain is only as intimidating as you let it be for yourself. So the reason why I wanted to go into this space was I thought that I would be part of a team assisting kids, including my young kids, at the same time, to be more aware of the digital threats out there. But it morphed into something else. I was a strong Facebooker. That was my talent in tech. And so, yeah, as I ask a lot of questions, I watch a lot of YouTube videos, I talk to a lot of people and that's how I've learned this. And at this point, anyone working in this space has no excuse for not doing the same thing, because this is how bad guys move money.

A (12:52)

Yeah. And so when did the organization start? How did that come about?

B (12:58)

The more I thought about this crisis and it is crisis level, make no mistake, it's a national security threat, it is a disaster, it is an absolute crisis. And the more I thought about what could be done, the answers were obvious to me and they were Educate, seize, disrupt. And so I started making that my mantra whenever I started talking about it all the time on LinkedIn. And I'd always end my post with educate, seize, disrupt. And the more I started to get people identifying with that and the more I dug into what really needed to be done, it was clear that this was a whole of government, whole of society issue and that all of us needed to be aligned in order to, to properly combat this enemy. And so I named it, I called it Operation Shamrock because I was looking for something that had a trio and I thought, oh, Shamrock has a trio. And it's hopeful and lucky. And I announced that I was starting Operation Shamrock. And I didn't even really know what it was going to be, but what I knew was it needed to be named and announced so that we could start bringing people together in a united front.

A (14:21)

And so you started the organization. Now what does the organization do? People, victims come to you?

B (14:28)

We do a lot of different things. In following the principles of Educate, Seize Disrupt, it seemed clear to me that we needed five pillars of this organization and they are law enforcement, banking, tech, foreign policy and victims. And to move that forward, I found leaders of each of these prongs. I found amazing people who wanted to found this with me. And what we do is we are an organization of action. That's our business. We are not the type of people who are going to sit on a panel and talk about it. We are going to tell you what we did yesterday and what we're doing tomorrow. So in that vein, just thinking about law enforcement, we needed to bring together the people internationally who do this work. And so I started something called the Crypto Coalition. And it is an online list serve and group and community where we discuss what is happening in cryptocurrency investigations and we teach each other. That group has grown from 85 people to in 2022 to 2300 today and growing. It is the place to be if you want to learn about and have a community of people who will help you learn how to investigate the blockchain. And that's just one of the things we do.

A (15:55)

Okay, so you educate the law enforcement officers, the people who are trying to do this hopefully and hopefully wonderfully with the prosecutor mindset so that they're gathering the evidence. Cause I think that is a problem that people don't realize is that police officers are trained to gather evidence in pretty simple physical ways. I don't trivialize that. It's a complex world. But gathering evidence in an electronic world is a totally different effort. And we've seen parts of that. I was watching a trial this week in Canada and a piece of evidence that's electronic just got tossed out. There's all kinds of issues. Is that the type of thing that you're working with?

B (16:32)

Absolutely. What we want to make sure is that we are constantly giving best practices, we are reinforcing best practices, we are educating about the nuts and bolts of how to do things. This isn't a theoretical exercise. This is somebody is going to come into your agency this week and tell you that they put money into a crypto atmosphere. What are you going to do for them? And that's the type of work that we do. And we are there to set up law enforcement for success. We are there to set up a situation where they know what to ask a victim for and they know how to go get what the victim doesn't have.

A (17:14)

And obviously there's a technical piece of it. Does it extend into helping the victims deal? One of the things that I've heard so much about is the shame. I talk about it openly on the program. My father was defrauded in the middle of the night. A stupid. One of the stupid phone call scams. And he looked at me and my dad was a very well educated man, a very smart man. Yeah. And I hope I wasn't disparaging. But I looked at him and he said, Jim, it's 2:00 in the morning. Could have been your brother. What was I to do?

B (17:43)

Exactly, Exactly. That's one of the important parts of this. So part of the awareness piece we do is we recognize that the scammers are so well set up for this because they've chosen a crime that makes people embarrassed and they've chosen a means of conveying money that people don't understand. So it's difficult to get victims to report and it's difficult to get these crimes investigated. It's perfect for scammers. So when we think about how do we fight this, we need to fight it in a way that makes it comfortable for people to come forward. We don't have any idea how big this problem is, because we know that if not enough people are reporting it.

A (18:30)

We know it's billions, and we know it's a terrible thing. And I think we know we've done stories on suicides and things like that that have resulted from this, but it's like the public doesn't. It's like we just want to put it off with petty theft or something. And I think that's. That seems to be the way it's treated.

B (18:48)

You're absolutely.

A (18:49)

Or they were stupid. They were conned. Even worse.

B (18:53)

You're absolutely right that until we start taking this crime as seriously as it is, which is an attack on the world's financial wherewithal, a national security threat, we are going to continue looking at it as an old lady who lives with her cats and got taken advantage of. And that's not what this is. This is a very targeted, organized, deliberate threat designed to steal a generation's worth of wealth and cause chaos.

A (19:29)

Yeah. And I think even in the cybersecurity world, there's a. I won't call it a dispute, but I would call it a disagreement on what we even call this. I know there's. There's a term pig butchering, which is very vivid, and. And then a lot of people say, wait a minute, back off of that. Why don't you call it financial grooming or romance scams or things like, where do you stand on that?

B (19:52)

The answer is very obvious to me personally, and that is, we have to call this pig butchering. 60 minutes is not interested in a story on financial grooming. If you tell people you want to talk to them about financial grooming, they are going to not listen because they think it will never happen to them. I am as empathetic to victims as they come. I spend hours a week talking directly to victims and understanding what they went through. But my job and my job for the past three years, and my job until this is the next Nigerian prince, is to tell everyone about this and to get their attention and help them ensure that it doesn't happen to them. So I'm going to call it pig butchering every chance I get. Because it's vile. Because this crime is vile. That is the nature. We've turned humans against humans to. To take advantage of the things that make them human, to take advantage of their core need to be loved and to exploit that and so that's why I call it pig butchering. And I'll tell you what, there was a big controversy about this. A lot of people have come around to calling it pig butchering. What I will also say, though, is it's not just pig butchering anymore. In 2022, this was pig butchering. In 2025, this is transnational organized crime. This is what this is. They are housed in an industrial size, and they're going to use every scam they can think of against us, not just pig butchering.

A (21:28)

Can you give us a description of what one of those organizations is like? I've heard there's human trafficking going on, there's abuse of the people who are actually conducting these scams or the people who were on the phone. Can you just give a picture of one of those organizations what that looks like?

B (21:44)

You bet. It's incomprehensible what is happening in Southeast Asia. When I first started studying this, I was able to understand that there were compounds doing this in an industrialized manner. And what that means is that there were literal blocks of. Of former hotels that had been repurposed to be scam centers. They're run by Chinese organized crime. And they were repurposed to do this type of crime, which requires a lot of human work to get it done. So in order to find people to do that human work and be the scammers, they had to advertise for jobs. So they advertised false jobs. They lured people into coming to what they thought was Bangkok to do what they thought was a live work job that was a very white collar. And when they arrived in Bangkok, their passports were taken, their phones were taken, they were put in vans, and they were moved into essentially an armed camp where they went through a gate with guards with AK47s. And they were now told that they would be doing scam work and they would be doing that 16 hours a day. And that was the job that they would be doing. And that they would be violently, violently handled if they didn't do that work. And that's exactly what happens. Because to try and repurpose people from thinking that they are going to do graphics design work to building a friendship with you and then stealing your money. You need violence to make regular people do that work. The violence is stunning. It is. People were routinely and are routinely getting tased. They are getting beaten with baseball bats. They are made to beat their colleagues with baseball bats. They are made to watch as people are beaten up. I've seen bruises, I've seen gashes. I've seen electric burns coming out of these facilities, and there's stories that are even a lot worse than that. And the violence against women doesn't always show itself with a bruise. There's really horrific things going on inside these buildings.

A (24:14)

I don't know, we see these things. We see these YouTube videos of, oh, I'm going to get the scammer and I'm going to. I'm going to humiliate them. And then you think that person's probably gonna get beaten when finish this call because they didn't handle it well?

B (24:27)

Yeah, 100%. I think that's a message that needs to get out there. There is a lot of acceptance and cheerleading of, yeah, let's torture these victims by making it difficult for them. But the fact is it makes it really difficult for them on the other side.

A (24:41)

Can you give me. Just because I want to frame this from the victim point of view as well, and I think it's important, can you give me a story that would be. I don't know if it's the average, but the type of thing that you would see from a victim point of view in this?

B (24:55)

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So what will happen is a victim will. Will get a new friend in some way, and it can be from a text that seems directed to someone else and the victim responds, or it can be they're getting even more clever where they will reach out to you on LinkedIn and say something like, my niece is considering moving to Seattle. I see that you live there. Can you tell me about the public transportation there? Or something like that. People by nature want to be helpful and they want to share their helpful information. And so all they are trying to do with any of these methods is to start the conversation. And once the conversation has started, they will drop in a picture of an attractive, usually an attractive young woman and start the conversation.

A (25:41)

Sorry. That's how I know they're not interested in me.

B (25:43)

Oh, you are very funny. You're very funny. But that's what happens when we look at reality of what is happening in our world. Since COVID we have a lot of lonely people and the world health organizational backup. A new conversation is welcome. And that conversation builds and builds. And soon people are spending four hours a day texting with this person that ultimately becomes their sole confidant. All of the really psychological techniques are used to isolate that victim and to reframe that victim's way of thinking into this is the only person that I can trust. And over time, that relationship Builds. It's a long con. It can go 90 days. All the while, the scammer is showing a really elevated lifestyle. They travel well, they drive a nice car, they have valuable things.

A (26:40)

Yeah, My. A friend got involved in one of these, and she's an intelligent person. She was recently split up. Look, trying to date. Most people do online dating. And she came back and she met this man. He was living in Cyprus. He had a. He'd sailed around the world. And I said, he's going to ask you for money. And she said, oh, don't be silly. We've had great discussions. We've had heartfelt discussions about literature, about art and all of that. I said, it's a con. And sure enough, thank God that I did tell her that, because everybody else was minding their own business, Right. But I did tell her that. And when he asked for money, she mentioned it to me. I said, I told you it was going to happen and it's not your fault. Said, this is a bad person. You're not the bad person. But I think that's something that you know. And a friend of mine the other day just. There's a Facebook thing going around, and I joke about it because, like I said, I'm not looking for romance at all in any way, shape or form. But sadly, I've got a friend who's. He's older. He's. We're maybe looking for even just conversation.

B (27:51)

Yeah. Companionship.

A (27:53)

Yeah. And so they exploit this, build up the trust and then start to. And I don't think people realize how much money sometimes gets taken from these people.

B (28:05)

It's incomprehensible that these scammers are really stealing someone's entire net worth. There's a misconception that people are giving their money away to people they don't know. With these type of industrialized scams, they are leading these victims to believe that they have found an amazing way to increase their own personal value by investing in this particular cryptocurrency scheme. And they will show them false profits and they will lead them to believe that they're becoming millionaires. And as that happens, victims continue to add money and add money because they see an increase and they see that it's their account. And so at the end of the day, it's that technique that really decimates people.

A (28:58)

I've looked at it and said, if all my retirement money was gone, what would I do? And that's what situation people are in. Mortgage their home, they've lost their money, and now they're devastated. Is there anybody who can, who can help them? Can they ever get any of that back?

B (29:15)

Yeah. One of the things that I insist upon at Operation Shamrock is tough love and being honest about what might and what will not work. And I would say that as we develop capability of law enforcement across the United States, we have come up with ways that some of that money might be able to be recovered if victims report immediately. But the nature of this crime is victims are not going to report immediately because it's going to take them a bit to come to terms with what has happened and to be able to get themselves in a position where they feel comfortable telling this story. And that also benefits the scammers. So what frequently happens is because they don't immediately go to law enforcement, they get on Google and they start looking for people to help them recover their money. And that is a secondary scam. People are losing yet another 10, $20,000 to scammers who say they can get their money back for you. So what I will say is it is highly unlikely that you will recover any money, period. Your only, your best and only means of recovery is immediately getting that information in the hands of capable law enforcement. And to do that is another piece that we've built at Operation Shamrock, and that is we've built a team of investigators who, on their time off, will investigate any case that comes their way. So if you have been a victim of this and your local law enforcement doesn't know what to do and you've put your information inside the FBI portal, another step to do is to go to operationshamrock.org and fill. Fill out a report there. Because once you fill out that report, our investigators are notified and they will look at your case and they will give you an answer, which for a lot of victims, is a piece that's lacking. They're disenfranchised. They feel like they're being overlooked. Nobody's taking them seriously. And for a lot of them, what they really need is an answer about whether or not their funds are recoverable.

A (31:32)

So what can we do as cybersecurity professionals? What should we be doing to support people like you and organizations like yours?

B (31:42)

So what I would love is if you go to operationshamrock.org and opt in. If you are in banking, we have a community for you. If you are in law enforcement, we have a community for you. We are now just developing that third industry community to attack this as well. But on a, as a person, there is a lot you can do in the meantime. You can go to our Operation Shamrock Train the Trainer class. We will give you a deck of slides that you can present at your local library, your local Rotary, or even to a group of friends, or even just get yourself educated on the scams that are out there. You can write your congressperson. We have a template on the Operation Shamrock website that talks about how we need funding for victim services and for law enforcement. You can tell everyone that you know about these scams and how they are operating so that people understand the massive problem that we are facing. Awareness is a large part of a way out of this.

A (32:58)

And so I want to make sure I get this. So we should go to operationshamrock.org and we can find kits and materials that will help us be able to explain this. And I've been telling people, make a presentation in your community. I'm slated to make one with our community, with the seniors, because. And I'm a senior. But I think that's an important thing we can do. Obviously, donations. Do you take donations? Probably something that would be a not for profit these days. But the other thing is, and I've said this to people, I would like to get your opinion on it. I've told them it's time to have the talk. And the talk used to be between the parent and the child, and now the talk is between the child and the parent, the lonely parent or the lonely person to sit down and say, first of all, as John Prine said, hello in there. But second of all, you're a target and you're going to be targeted in the same way we do with our employees. You're going to be targeted by scammers. Here's what you have to do. I think we have to have that talk with people around us so that they know that in the same way that we used to say with teenagers, you could come and talk to me about anything. We have to be able to say that to our parents. You can come and talk to me about this.

B (34:15)

I love hearing you say, that's exactly what needs to be done. And there's something I've heard you say a couple of times in this conversation, too, that needs to be reinforced. And that is, we know you're smart. We know you've had a very impressive career. We know that you have been educated at the best institutions. But scammers will find a way around all of that. And this has nothing to do with your intelligence. This has everything to do with. This is their occupation all day, every day. And They've trained with PhDs to know exactly how to manipulate your mind. And so that's an important piece of it too, is I know you think this wouldn't happen to you. We all think that. But it happens to everybody. And it won't happen on your best day. It'll happen on a day that you're tired or you're put under pressure.

A (35:04)

Absolutely. And I've been saying this in the cyber security community is, stop pretending you're perfect. Yesterday I saw an email from my brother. I haven't heard from him in a while. He's had some real tragedy in his life. I clicked before. I thought, I don't do that. But everybody is vulnerable at a certain point. Thank God for endpoint protection. But everybody can be caught at one point or another. We're all vulnerable.

B (35:31)

I love that you tell that story because I tell a similar story and talk literally every day about this topic. And I was on LinkedIn and I was having a conversation back and forth with a victim who said, I'm not even sure you actually care about this. And I was trying to educate that I do care about it. I went to bed, I woke up pre dawn, I see an email, and the email is from a victim, and I think it's that same victim. And he's saying, I don't think you care. And so I posted on my Facebook about you and I was like, oh, but I do care. And I clicked on it and I was like, oh, my God, that's exactly what. That's exactly how to target Aaron West. And so that's the thing is that's how scammers. Yep. They don't, they're not going to get me with a, with a pop up on my computer, but if they think that I might respond to something about victims, that's how they get me. So we're all vulnerable.

A (36:26)

Is there a last message you'd like to leave for our cybersecurity community?

B (36:31)

Be kind. Lead with empathy. When you talk about this in a way that provides support for people you might be talking to that you don't even realize are a victim. That is the thing is, this is so rampant and there are so many victims that are not speaking up. If you are talking about victims as being stupid or using language that shows that you're not open to a conversation about this, nobody's going to talk to you about it. We need to change the narrative to we're under attack and you got attacked. I'm an open door for you. I would love to hear your story and educate about your story. So that's my message that without kindness, people are not going to come forward. So let's give our colleagues, our friends, the opportunity to do just that.

A (37:24)

And just one final point there. Is there a story? Is there a triumphant story? Is there any big success that you've had that you want to share?

B (37:32)

Every day? Every day there is something. And you can always look for the positive. You can get mered down in the negative, but you can also look for the positive. And so what I will say is, I'll give you a great one. I in this work, I've become acquainted with other, other people internationally who are helpers. And someone reached out to me in London and said, I am working with a British victim and her scammer was arrested in Nigeria on that Nigerian phone. There was a conversation with a woman in Florida who's already sent him $2.4 million. She is selling her house. The house closes on Tuesday and she's about to send him another 1.3 million and meet him in Switzerland. Can you help me find that victim and get someone to help her? And so I dropped that into my crypto coalition listserv and within 10 minutes, someone reached out to me and gave me a contact in that county. I reached out to that person on a weekend and by Monday morning, someone was at the house of this victim and got her to understand what was happening and not send that money. So this is how we fix this. It is little stories every day that move us forward. It is continuing to focus on the positive because if we look at this thing, it is massive and ugly and on fire. But if we keep throwing a cup of water and moving forward, it's really the only way forward. And so we have to look for those successes.

A (39:10)

Yeah. And you can save one life anyway. I would say that's a thing we do in cybersecurity because we can't do everything. We don't do anything.

B (39:20)

Love it.

A (39:21)

Yeah. So it's just like cyber security. Take the steps you can take one of them. And I'm going to entreat you all. I will be on the site today is operationshamrock.org operationshamrock.org go there after this, have a coffee, look at the site and get involved. Aaron west, you are marvelous. Thank you so much. I'm so glad. I get the wonderful pleasure of meeting people across the Internet and this has been a wonderful meeting and I wish you the best with this and we will have you back.

B (39:52)

Thank you so much for having me.

A (39:55)

And that's the conversation with Aaron west from Operation Shamrock, I hope you were as moved as I was. And I wasn't kidding when I said I'd be signing up in the Operation Shamrock.org website, nor was I kidding when I said this would be the first of our conversations. I'm sure we'll have her back and we've already got some follow up shows with law enforcement and we'll be asking them some questions about this because as cybersecurity followers and professionals, I think you'll agree we may have an obligation to use our skills to help fight this growing scourge. I know I say I'd love to hear from you and it's true, but on this topic I really would like to hear from you and get your thoughts. So right after you get to your computer and you go to operationshamrock.org and you check them out, maybe you'll drop me a line too. You can reach me at editorialech, newsday, ca or on LinkedIn or if you're watching on YouTube, just leave a comment under the video. I'm your host, Jim Love. Thanks for listening.